"The term 'bohemian' has come to be very commonly accepted in our day as the description of a certain kind of literary gipsey, no matter in what language he speaks, or what city he inhabits .... A bohemian is simply an artist or littérateur who, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from conventionality in life and in art." (Westminster Review, 1862, noted at Etomology Dictionary. (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bohemian|Online))

The term reflects the French perception, since the 15th century, that the gypsies had come from Bohemia. Literary bohemians were associated in the French imagination with roving gypsies, outsiders apart from conventional society and untroubled by its disapproval. There is perhaps a connotation of being the bearers of arcane enlightenment (the opposite of 'Philistines') and silently accused too of being careless of personal hygiene.

The term has become associated with various artistic or academic communities and is used as a generalized adjective describing such people, environs, or situations: bohemian' (boho - informal) is defined in The American College Dictionary as "a person with artistic or intellectual tendencies, who lives and acts with no regard for conventional rules of behavior."

Bohemians were often associated with drugs and self-induced poverty, but, overall, many of the most talented European and American literary figures of the last 150 years had a bohemian cast, so that a list of bohemians would be tediously long. Even a bourgeois writer like Honoré de Balzac approved of bohemianism, although most bourgeois did not. In fact, the two groups were often cited as opposites. David Brooks's book Bobos in Paradise describes the history of this clash and the modern melding of bohemia and the bourgeoisie into a new educated upper class — Bourgeois bohemian, abbreviated to bobos.

The current Broadway hit Rent is set in New York City and gives a glimpse into a more recent bohemia. This show was written by Jonathan Larson and is based on La bohème. One of the feature numbers, La Vie Boheme, addresses the death of bohemia as an end to the neighborhood as a haven for these bohemians, while celebrating the ideals and history that formed this counter-culture.